by Wendy Lee
When Caroline didn’t respond, Peter pressed the palms of his hands together and looked skyward, as if in a benediction. “WWAHD.” When Caroline looked confused, he added, “What Would Aunt Hazel Do.”
Hazel would have told that landlord exactly what she thought of him, how he was a disgrace to his father’s name and the names of all of his ancestors before him, but in the end she would have done whatever it took to preserve the gallery. So that’s what Caroline decided she would do, too.
Provenance, or the origin of the painting, was a big issue, but there were stories all the time about paintings mysteriously showing up. A canvas belonging to a Nazi sympathizer that turned out to have been looted from a Jewish family. A work that had formerly been attributed to an apprentice now discovered to have been executed by his master. Andrew Cantrell had no institute or estate that could authenticate or verify his work. All Caroline had to go on was Hazel’s relationship with Cantrell, and the fact that she had inherited everything that had belonged to her aunt.
Through Peter she learned more about the mistakes that contemporary forgers made: using the wrong kind of canvas, the wrong kind of paint, chemicals that hadn’t been invented at the time the painting had supposedly been made. Peter suggested that rather than pretending to have discovered a completely unknown work by Cantrell, that she choose something that had existed and was said to have been lost in the fire.
Down in the basement of the building Hazel had a stack of catalogs from the year the Lowry Gallery had shown Andrew Cantrell’s painting Elegy. Opening to the faded image on the page, Caroline recalled seeing it not only the time Hazel had introduced her and Rose to Cantrell, but in another context. She had been in San Francisco, in front of a newsstand, looking at the paper whose sensational headline declared the death of an American artist. No matter that Cantrell hadn’t sold anything since the two-million-dollar offer for Elegy, and his style of painting had since gone out of favor. In his picture on the front page, he didn’t look that different from the man she’d seen at the gallery opening, except perhaps with more hair; maybe the newspaper had run a photo from an earlier, more prosperous time. Accompanying it was an image of Elegy, describing it as one of the paintings lost in the fire. Even in newspaper ink, the painting seemed to leap from the page. This, Caroline decided, would be the work she would resurrect.
She didn’t doubt that she could find someone with the technical skill to pull it off. She had worked with enough artists over the years to recognize that technical prowess was very easy to come by; what was difficult was to find the right blend of vision and confidence. What she needed was to find someone who knew enough about the artist but not so much as to be intimidated. And someone who would be willing to do the job for very little money. Perhaps a disgruntled artist who had watched his cohort leave him behind in terms of money and prestige? A cocky young art student who wanted to thumb her nose at the establishment? Caroline decided that Peter was right, she needed to find her Zhang Daqian, in more ways than one. She didn’t need a renowned master, but a foreigner who knew enough English to understand the deal but not enough to feel comfortable going to the authorities. Someone who lived on the outskirts of life as well as fame.
Where would she find an artist like that? She couldn’t ask anyone she knew, at the risk of ruining her reputation. If she put an ad online, she could be traced. She had spent weeks pondering this when she happened to stop in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, arrested by a Monet reproduction being sold at a stall. This Chinese man, Liu, was the perfect candidate. He certainly knew how to play a part—witness the traditional clothes he wore and the tea he served when she visited his meager living conditions in Queens. He must have thought she was one of those women of a certain age whose homes were filled with souvenirs of another culture, as proof they were worldly.
According to the canvases he showed her in the studio, Liu appeared to be stuck artistically as well as financially. He’d have to paint dozens of his Impressionist replicas to make the three thousand dollars she was offering him. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to catch on that the client for the painting was fictitious, and neither did he blink an eye about being paid in cash. She figured that was how he must usually operate. And it could be that this job would break him out of his rut, of drawing the same image—was it a mountain or something else phallic?—over and over. Caroline convinced herself she was doing him a favor.
That had been a few weeks ago. She’d delivered half of the payment to Liu but hadn’t heard from him since. He’d said he’d need a month to finish the painting. Caroline supposed she was being paranoid, but she didn’t trust e-mailing or even telephoning him to find out how he was doing. And she wasn’t about to go all the way out to his studio unless she had to.
Molly had returned to the gallery by now, bearing a bouquet of chrysanthemums with pathetic-size blooms. Caroline should have told her to go the Korean grocer two avenues over instead of two blocks up, where the chrysanthemums looked like mop heads. Leaving Molly to arrange the flowers, she went into her office and had taken the first sip of her tea when the extension on her phone rang.
“It’s Peter on line one,” Molly’s tinny voice rang out when she pressed the button.
“That’s fine, Molly, I’ll take it.”
“You know how we were talking about that Andrew Cantrell painting?” Peter said. “I think I have someone who’s interested in buying it. He’s a Taiwanese businessman, last name Yu. Damian met him at a company event. Turns out he’s looking for Western art as an investment piece. Someone like Cantrell would be right up his alley, not a huge name but could possibly be big in a few years.”
Damian was Peter’s partner, who worked for a foreign investment bank. Caroline didn’t like him much, finding him too sleek in his well-cut suits, but somehow he and Peter had been together for nearly a decade. Caroline frowned, thinking about how much Peter must have told Damian over the years about her family history. There was no way Peter could have kept the latest twist in the story to himself. Already too many people knew about this scheme for her comfort.
As if he could tell what she was thinking, Peter said, “I only told Damian that you had an Andrew Cantrell painting that you were trying to find a private buyer for.”
Caroline doubted that Damian would be so incurious as not to want to know more, but she merely said, “What makes you think this Taiwanese businessman can afford to buy art?”
“He’s the head of some kind of manufacturing company. Computer parts, I think Damian said. What are you planning to sell the painting for?”
“How much do you think I should sell it for?” Caroline had estimated a few hundred thousand dollars, but she wanted Peter’s opinion.
“Two million,” was Peter’s immediate reply.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Not at all. That’s how much Andrew Cantrell was offered for it back in the day, right? It’s a bargain, considering inflation. Anything less, and the buyer won’t think you’re serious. Or even that the painting’s real.”
“Won’t he want verification?”
“If he needs a professional opinion, I’m happy to step in.”
“You’re just an art historian. What if he finds an actual art authenticator?”
“Trust me, he won’t. These things happen all the time in art sales. People who won’t blink an eye at paying a few hundred thousand dollars for a painting balk at spending a few hundred dollars for X-ray imaging or paint analysis. They’re the ones who want to believe the most that a painting is real, and the desire to believe is a powerful thing.”
Caroline leaned her head against her hands. “Okay, Peter. I trust you.” After all, she’d trusted him before when it came to selling art, with positive results. Also, she was beginning to think she needed an ally, that she wasn’t strong enough to pull this plan off herself.
“Good,” Peter replied, “because Damian passed your number on to this man Yu so he can stop by your gallery before he le
aves the country. That should be in the next couple of days.”
A momentary sense of panic rose in Caroline, which she quickly quelled. Even though Elegy didn’t exist in reality yet, it existed on paper. She’d show Yu the catalog and tell him she was getting the painting restored, its condition not being the best after spending years in storage. This wouldn’t be so different from what she did every day, trying not only to sell a piece of art to someone, but her thoughts about its aesthetic merit and value, which were usually not the same thing. Sometimes she wondered if she and the client were even looking at the same painting.
“This has to work,” she spoke her thoughts out loud. “Otherwise I’ll lose the gallery.” Catching herself, she shook her head. Together, she and Peter would have made the worst spies in the world.
“Of course it’ll work,” Peter assured her.
After she hung up the phone, Caroline went to the front desk, where Molly had her head studiously bent over her laptop.
“Molly, I should let you know that an important client will be coming around in the next day or so. Someone by the name of—” She paused, not knowing the man’s first name. “His last name is Yu. He’s from Taiwan, so keep an ear out. If he calls, please put him straight through to me.”
Molly nodded, catching on to the importance of the event.
Everything seemed to be coming together nicely: the painting, the artist, and the buyer. It was all thanks to Peter, Caroline thought. Maybe she should take him out to dinner and invite Damian along. It might be a good idea to find out just how much Damian knew and impress upon him the need to stay silent. Because if anyone was going to take the fall, it was her. As far as Liu knew, he had been hired to paint a replica. Peter had done nothing more than plant the seed for the idea, and Damian had simply made the client connection.
As long as no else found out about the forgery, she’d be safe.
Chapter 3
“Is there anything else you need me to do?” I asked my boss at the end of the day.
Caroline looked at me over the rims of her glasses, which I thought were fancy but ugly. “No thanks, Molly. You can go home now.”
On the subway ride back home, I watched the faces of the people getting grimmer and grimmer the farther the train went into Queens. I wondered what it would be like to have the kinds of jobs I imagined they had, the men in their wrinkled suits and the women in support hose. Some kind of sales rep or government administrator. If a seat opened up, I pretended not to see it. I was probably the least deserving person among them to sit down. Not that I didn’t sit all day at work anyway.
Compared to them, I felt like a fake. Although in a different way from Lauren and Sabrina, girls I’d known in college, whom I occasionally met up with for drinks. Lauren worked in a public relations firm, while Sabrina was an assistant to an ad executive. I’d listen to them, stirring the ice at the bottom of a drink that was way too sweet and pricey, as they talked about sample sales, one-hundred-dollar blowouts, and terrible dates with junior investment bankers. They shared an apartment on the Upper East Side and complained about how difficult it was to walk to the subway in new heels purchased at the aforementioned sample sales. I didn’t feel like I was younger than them or older than them, just that I lived in an entirely different city.
What could I say that would interest them? That, aside from my boss and the deli worker from whom I bought lunch, I hardly had any face-to-face interactions all day? That I spent my mornings purchasing flowers and tea for my boss, and my afternoons fielding calls from disgruntled artists or my boss’s gay art historian friend? That after work I went home to the apartment I shared with my college boyfriend, Sam? And that our relationship was as convivial and dull as anyone’s who had moved in together too young?
I got off the train and followed everyone else down the stairs and into the street. Over the past few months the signs had stopped being a jangle of unfamiliar words and colors and turned into what was just my daily routine. On the corner was the bar Sam and I went to sometimes on Friday nights. Opposite it was the Dominican bakery where we got milky sweet coffee and cheese rolls on Sunday. Down the street was the salon—excessively called Number One Modern Beauty Parlor—that I had gone to once, when I’d first arrived in the city in the heat of late summer and been totally disgusted by the state of my toes. I’d worn my nicest pair of sandals but after walking around all day, my toes turned completely black.
After rounding the corner, I walked down a series of side streets before reaching our apartment. Sam and I had always planned to move to the city after we graduated, only I had screwed up the plan by dropping out of school before the end of our senior year. We’d kept up our long-distance relationship, with him at school while I lived at home and figured out what to do with my life. When I told my parents I was moving to the city to be with him in the summer, I think they were worried this meant I wasn’t going back to school to finish my degree. What’s the point? I wanted to tell them, but knew they wouldn’t understand.
Predictably, my mother was also worried whether the neighborhood was safe. It went without saying that she only knew the city from lunches with her friend and my boss, Caroline Lowry. While I was growing up, she was always talking about her fascinating friend Caroline, who lived in the city and wore bright scarves and oversize jewelry. When Caroline came up to Connecticut for a visit, which was not very often, she struck me as less mystical than my mother had described, but that was a good thing. I was still a little afraid of her, because whenever my mother talked about her at the dinner table, my father would make disagreeable noises, like she was something that caused him indigestion.
Also, Caroline would occasionally send me postcards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which my mother would treat as if they were as precious as the paintings themselves. And they were never postcards of paintings suitable for children, like one of Edgar Degas’s dancers or a garden scene by Renoir, but ones that hinted of more adult desires, like John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X or Henri Rousseau’s The Repast of the Lion. When I finally went to the Met as a teenager, I would walk by a certain painting and feel a certain tingle of recognition, as if someone had whispered into my ear or touched my shoulder. Then I thought, Oh, Caroline sent me a postcard of that one.
My mother was the one who arranged for me to work for Caroline. I don’t think she had any faith I could find a job on my own, and maybe she was right. I mean, I didn’t have a degree. Sam worked for an urban farm in Brooklyn, conducting class field trips for kids who evidently had no idea where their food came from. “Can you believe some of them didn’t know that carrots grow in the ground?” he’d marvel. He came home at night bearing seasonal vegetables and stories about some ridiculously cute thing a child had said. I thought of it as his “quote of the day.” His major had been early childhood education, and privately I wondered if he would end up dumping me for a blond Midwestern girl who worked for Teach for America. Maybe I even hoped he would.
Today, when I got home, he was already there starting dinner. From the smell of it, we were still stuck in summer squash season. Sam tried every way to get rid of it, in bread and fritters and soup, making me think of the zucchini in my mother’s garden. For a moment, I wondered whether it was too late to sneak out the door and get takeout. But Sam had already heard me come in and kissed me, his beard scratchy against my face.
“You know what this kid said today?” was the first thing he said.
“What?” I asked patiently.
“He said vegans are eaten by carnivores. I think he meant to say herbivores.”
I had to laugh at that one. What a different world Sam occupied during the day, filled with living, growing things, both vegetable and human.
“Anything interesting happen to you today?” he asked.
“Nothing much. Except I overheard this conversation between my boss and her art historian friend this morning.” I hadn’t meant to listen in on the phone, except that they had mentioned Andrew Ca
ntrell. I’d recognized his name from one of my art history classes.
“What’d they say?”
“Something about an Asian collector coming by to visit the gallery.” I thought of the two Asian men who’d stopped in the gallery about a month ago. Neither of them had looked like they were involved in business, though. One was a graying bohemian and the other could have been a takeout delivery person.
“And that’s unusual?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There was just something weird about it. How secretive she was being. I guess it’s none of my business.” I didn’t add that Caroline had basically admitted to needing to sell this painting in order the save the gallery. I could tell Sam was already checking out of the conversation by the way he was turning his head toward our miniscule kitchen.
“Sorry, babe,” he said. “Got something in the oven.”
After dinner, which was baked summer squash, I did the dishes while Sam watched a Web series on his laptop. We didn’t own a television, and wouldn’t have paid for cable even if we did, but a large part of our utilities went to high-speed Internet. Occasionally a burst of laughter came from the living room, and while once that might have made me smile or ask what was so funny, now I just blocked it out as I did the noise coming in through the open windows. Our building was close enough to our neighbors that I could hear the clatter of someone else doing their dishes, a door slamming downstairs, a person whistling as they walked down the street. Farther away was the low, ever-present hum of traffic from the expressway, occasionally interrupted by a motorcycle or police siren.
Sam was one of those people who went to bed early so he could get in a run before work the next morning. As soon as I heard the bedroom door close, I went to the small second bedroom. It was around the size of a walk-in closet with a window, and it contained an easel, some half-finished canvases, half-finished tubes of pigment, a can of primer, crumpled and stained newspapers. This was my studio, and Sam’s big selling point for the apartment.